I have a weird need to organize things. The problem is that it’s usually when I’m at someone else’s house. Music or movie collections are my usual target. I once spent the night at a friend’s house and there was a CD collection in the same room as me. It was hard to get to sleep with that haphazard jumble of titles staring at me.

My books are organised first by author, then by place in a series, and then by spine-height. One odd proviso, however, the authors are grouped by average spine-height, so I don’t have a jumble of single books at all different heights.

I organized my books by series, and then by series order, but overall they’re just organized by general size. My games, however, are ordered by system, then by recency of purchase, and then possibly by series order if it applies.

I like keeping my record collection in alphabetical order, but I have one minor problem. I have two copies of Dark Side of the Moon, one normal one and one on blue vinyl, and I have no idea which should go first. I lie awake at night thinking “maybe I should’ve put the blue one first”…

I do that with my music – sorted by track number, then album, then artist. God help the person who screws up my folders – they’ll need it. My entire collection of music is on my computer (takes up about 1/5 of my hard drive, which is 320GB) so it’s easy to keep organised.
My books, on the other hand, are sorted by fiction/non-fiction, then by spine height, then by author. I have all of my Discworld and LotR books in chronological order though.

I’m a mildly OCD movie buff with an ever-expanding DVD collection. I arrange it chronologically by initial U.S. release date. On the rare instances that two movies came out on the same day (like “American Psycho” and “Boondock Saints” – Jan 21, 2000), I arrange them alphabetically. I keep track of the master list on a Word document on my computer, so whenever I get something, it’s easy to IMDb it and file it accordingly.

…though, since I keep my DVDs in a sleeve instead of their boxes (no shelf space), it’s really annoying when, say, I get Casablanca (Nov. 26, 1942) for my birthday and have to shift all 100+ titles forward one space.

I have an almost perverse need to organize. I started a new job back at the end of October in a repair shop, and there was no organization to speak of. Drove me crazy that I had to wait until I didn’t have a huge stack of instruments to fix before I could sort stuff. About a quarter of the shop is cleaned up now.

And you’d think my room would be constantly tidy, but no. Only the books and CDs. The book series go chronologically, the rest go by subject and then by size. The CDs go by genre, artist and colour. Oh, and my beads and miscellaneous art supplies. Those are sorted by colour too.

O! There was a British comedy duo who did a series of sketches. One of which took place in a bookshop that one of the two arranged by color and size. The other comes in as a customer who is obviously irritated by this. He complains until a woman comes in and gushes over the book she got from the store, it obviously being of an erotic nature. She hands the book back to the shopkeep and walks out. The shopkeep turns his attention back to the customer who was complaining and asks if he found a book yet. “Yes, the big blue one”, the customer responds, indicating the book that was just returned.

but I can’t remember the name of either of the comedians, nor can I remember the name of their show. Which is really irritating me.

I just realized (and I’m probably not the first one to do so) but Biff’s activities can almost always be used as facebook statuses. If you’re looking for a facebook status, the internet, come here first?

I recognize those symptoms all too well…funny how it just won’t happen when you’re at home, no? At a friend’s house, I sorted all of his DVD movies in alphabetical order for no reason whatsoever…and he’s got a TON. Also, he got slightly annoyed with my alphabetizing – movies starting with “The” didn’t go under T, for example, but the next word’s initial letter (D for “The Departed”, for example).

The books aren’t properly sorted yet; he needs to sort them by color first, then by shade. And what does he do if the book has a picture on the cover? How does he determine the color then? Or a novelty transparent book cover!

ummm…no, I’m fine. I thought I might have OCD once, so I looked up the symptoms, and found out that I don’t have it.

Me and Biff are sympatico. I once did this. I put all my paperbacks (I believe 3 bookcases worth then) in spectrum order, then debated where to put white, black & gray. It was a lot of work, but looked really cool when I was done. Anal, but very cool.